Happy Short week Friday! I’ve been looking forward to this week’s drink for a little while now. The reason being I was going to make it while on vacation on the Cape. Why the Cape? Well, my supply of Fernet Branca has been living there for a little while and I never bothered to re-supply back at home. What is the drink that had me eagerly waiting for my vacation? Don’t Give Up the Ship. This post war drink got its name from the famous order “Don’t give up the ship!” given by Captain James Lawrence aboard the USS Chesapeake during the War of 1812. How this cocktail got named after this famous order is beyond me. Either way, I’m looking forward to trying this one.
1.5 oz. London Dry Gin
.5 oz. Cointreau
.5 oz. Fernet Branca
.5 oz. sweet vermouth
1-2 dashes orange bitters
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass and stir on ice for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain off the ice into a footed coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with an orange peel.
The drink has a very strong fernet nose I pick up immediately. I can also get hints of orange mixed in with the bitters and garnish responsible for those. But really, the fernet really drives this drink’s aroma..
I get heavy bitterness immediately on the first sip from the ferne,. for better or worse. This bitter forward flavor is intense, but it mellows out pretty quickly. The drink sweetens up a bit about midway through the sip thanks to the sweet vermouth doing yeoman’s work to reign in the heavy fernet flavor. The gin for the most part is lost behind all of the other strong flavors going on here. I can get some hints of the juniper here and there, but the gin is most definitely not the star of the show.
The finish is still bitter, but less so than it is up front. Most of the orange flavors come out at the end which is a nice touch as a finishing note.
Overall, I like this. It is a little close to a Hanky Panky though. Which looking at the ingredient list it isnt surprising. This IS a hanky panky with orange liqueur and orange bitters. So if you weren’t a fan of that, I’d let this ship sink. However, as mentioned before, I did like this. I thought the orange really added a nice depth of flavor and the flavors really played well with the bitter base flavor. Try both side by side and see what you think.
This is stupid. We have to watch two trash teams here in Salt Lick? Is there anything lamer than “The Sam Darnold Revenge Game?” Can we just end the stupid Sunday Ticket monopoly already so we don’t give our computers an E-STD trying to watch a game we want to watch? I’ll happily pay to be able to stream on all platforms. Some people in this state would like to watch some decent football.
Red Zone shows a free preview in Week 1.
I just saw a link offering to show me a video of Stephen A. Smith arguing with Tim Tebow about the Dallas Cowboys.
Not today, Satan. Not any day.
Your Marble League Champion is: shit, can we do spoilers? Uh, spoilers.
Mellow Yellow, coming in 3rd in the marblocross. Raspberry Racers couldn’t get out of traffic starting in the back and finished 15th, earning the silver, with the Gliding Glaciers being this year’s surprise team and getting the overall bronze.
See you at Greenstone in 2022, hosted by the Green Ducks!
Mellow Yellow! My team! I think Gumby’s is Crazy Cat’s Eyes, or something very much like that. How are they doing?
The hosts finished 5th (3-way tie for 4th with the Hazers and Momo; Hazers get 4th on number of bronzes since gold/silver tied; CCE get 5th/Momo 6th on number of golds)
Thanks!
Looks like it was a rough year for my Minty Maniacs. They look…
…not so fresh.
Rough go for the Speeders. Speedy still hasn’t recovered from flying off the track in that Marbula One race.
Hey, Horatio, did you get that thing i sent you?
[laughs maliciously] – Louis DeJoy
Nothing like a three hour phone conference on a Friday afternoon. What the hell are they thinking of? Yeesh.
At least it was a pretty interesting presentation.
Hey, Bagram Airfield isn’t just going to rebuild itself, ya know?
So, in an utterly predictable move, Andrew Yang has announced that he’s no longer a Democrat and will be starting a third party. It will not surprise anyone that this announcement is coincidentally timed to match his upcoming book release.
While I’m somewhat concerned that a Yang Party could bleed off just enough “I don’t like the GOP, but the Democrats aren’t techbro-y enough for me” votes to affect a close race, I console myself with the thought that Yang has already demonstrated that he won’t do the hard work of politics. He tried to take a shortcut by running for president before holding any other office, then ran a campaign for NYC mayor where he seemed utterly unprepared to engage on any basis other than “hey, you’ve all heard of me!”
Building an actual successful third party would require a lot of organizing and recruitment of candidates at the local level, which is why most third party efforts in the U.S. fail — everybody wants to start at President or Governor instead of doing the boring hard work of picking off a state legislature seat or three and building from there.
So, on the off chance that this isn’t just a book-promoting grift to begin with, I suspect Yang will quickly get bored and move on.
Nobody is going to want to vote for an admitted gang leader.
Time for a rant about cocktail shakers.
For a few years now, I’ve owned two of them. One was the standard three-piece metal deal — a big cup, a lid with a strainer, and a shot-glass-like thingy that covers the strainer. I think I bought it as part of a set of bar tools.
The other I think I got in one of those boxes from the liquor store where they package a bottle of alcohol along with a couple of brand-labelled glasses, or in this case a cocktail shaker. I only learned the name recently, but it was a Boston shaker — it has two cups, one of which you invert and insert into the other to create a seal before you shake.
The Boston shaker was so much easier to use that it became my go-to. However, it had one flaw, which is that the inverted cup was made of glass. Inevitably, I dropped it on my kitchen floor a couple of months ago and it broke.
Only then did I appreciate what a massive pain in the ass the three-piece thing is. Because all the parts are metal, they tend to get stuck in each other when they undergo temperature changes — which is the kind of thing that tends to happen when you fill one of them with ice and liquid and shake vigorously. Just a goddamn disaster.
So I went looking for a new one, and it turns out that although Boston shakers are widely used by bartenders (because, duh, they’re better), they’re actually somewhat hard to find in retail outlets. I eventually ordered one from Amazon, and while I don’t like it as much as my old one, there are no glass parts so it’s probably for the best.
Anyway, my point is — Boston shakers are vastly superior (shut up Tawwmy), get one if you don’t already own one, and why the fuck is the market so wrong on this?
I have the three piece shaker set down here at Forward Operating Base: Cape Cod. However I just use a pint glass instead of the top, for the aforementioned reasons. So in a pinch, a pint glass can work.
Yeah, I think my particular combo of shaker base and the pint glasses I have were unable to get a good seal.
My go-to cocktail shaker is a Boston shaker (new word that I have learned, thank you Dunstan!) made by Ketel One. It’s got a metal inner layer and a plastic outer one. I had one of these for a long time and when it eventually broke, I was miserable with the standard shaker until I discovered another Ketel One shaker at a garage sale. There were actually two of them there, so I bought them both.
It may not be the exact “Boston” design that you are describing but it works perfectly, because it doesn’t leak, and it doesn’t fly apart.
Oh, also the cap is a 3/4 oz size, which is ideal because my jigger is 1 and 1 1/2 oz sizes.
I’m not sure — can’t tell without seeing it disassembled — but that doesn’t look like a Boston shaker to me. I’m referring to something like this:
https://www.crateandbarrel.com/stainless-steel-boston-shaker/s586739?localedetail=US&storeid=513&a=1552&campaignid=10461646737&adgroupid=103999388819&targetid=pla-925022623385&pla_sku=586739&pcat=HSW&ag=adult&gclid=CjwKCAjwhOyJBhA4EiwAEcJdcXsKP9_PRK0OFuy0RU99aDtTrOAU3uckMhbByRTkCEeE_wE_5q698hoCr4oQAvD_BwE
Yeah, it’s a bit different. The Ketel One design is actually better, I’d argue, because it’s fitted so it’s less likely to come loose and/or leak.
The plastic lining probably helps. Anyway, if it’s working for you, that’s what matters.
It would work for everybody. It’s the best cocktail shaker ever made.
I’m just going to interpret this as an open invitation to walk into your place and make myself a drink.
I have one of the three piece shakers that has been stuck together since approximately 1988 or so. And yet, I have packed it up and moved it a zillion times because you never know!
Leave it out in the sun on a hot day! Maybe the thermal expansion will cause it to become unstuck.
It’s in my storage unit, and I would imagine it get’s pretty hot in there. We’re not drinking anymore, so it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure I have a plastic one too.
Welp. No banner image apparently. I blame WordPress
Something ain’t right with the system.
I had several extraordinarily witty and incisive comments that did not make it through last night. I just want you all to know that, and you have my sympathies for missing out on them.
I recall nominating one for the banner
Very kind of you. Perhaps the new banner should just be:
“||||||||” — everyone
Meanwhile, all of my dumb bullshit made it through just fine.
Learn how to discern quality, WordPress.
It’s fixed now, thanks to some irresistibly sexy mysterious stranger.